To Town With Harry Potter

Temple of Worship, West End style

Just surfing exhaustion today brought upon by only two and a bit days in Bucks and London. I definitely needed to limp home after great fun with my son and some of his family, specifically, with one grandson celebrating his 21^st today [June 16] A whole year ago, he had bought tickets for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, currently staged at the Palace Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, for three people including me, an H.Potter non-follower. His real kindness and generosity to me are SO appreciated however; his boundless love for H.P. is infectious!

 J.K.Rowling

I neglect to mention a further refinement: either through theatrical design or financial expediency, the entire production stretched over TWO evenings so the mountaineering to what my generation used to fondly refer to as ‘the Gods’, entailed climbing what felt like a hundred stairs [healthy!] to the steeply-stepped seats with leg-room for dwarves, on two consecutive evenings. As grandson’s perceptive friend, an actor and the third member of our group, remarked, the theatre audience demographic was unusual; families, young women, non-theatre-goers normally, brought with them a remarkable, collective disinhibition. Cheers, groans, noisy elation or despair, that curious ‘Whoooooo’ of appreciation that young people make and ‘on-your-feet’ cheering, waving and jumping about in total body worship, at the finale, were there in abundance. It all demonstrated a real encompassing involvement in the narrative and a huge appreciation of both performance and production. J.K.Rowling is a magician herself; years ago with her first Harry Potter book she single-handedly converted thousands of young boys to voluntary, nay enthusiastic, reading. And now, with this theatre venture such an enduring and total success, she is bringing in astonishing numbers of fans to experience theatre too. I am in awe.

In fact, The Cursed Child was amazing: fabulous production values; extraordinary creativity; magical choreography [HOW could one character, mid-stage, metamorphose before audience eyes, into another, completely different person?]; first-rate casting and acting; a gripping narrative that almost made sense eventually, even to an agnostic like me. A real spectacle indeed.

I DID enjoy strolling, post-theatre, through the crowded, multi-lingual, multi-cultural streets of London, pushing through others leaving theatres, with tourists by the thousand so pleased to be there; excited families on special occasion trips up to Town,

NOT the West End Theatre land but Oxford Street.
Similar crowds however.

and on the roads, among the buses and cars, motor bikes and bicycles; rickshaw drivers working hard for the enjoyment of their passengers, dodging pedestrians, many half-transfixed by the lights and personalities on show. Beggars were still, heart-breakingly, at work among passers-by who had other sights on their minds and other priorities pressing. But the feelings of surrounding vitality and fun and excitement were irrepressible.

 The splendid Gauthier.
The boys enjoyed the locked front door with the attendant
necessity to ring for admittance.

On our second day in London for H.P. worship, we went to a super restaurant, Gauthier on Romilly Street, for a celebratory lunch for the Birthday Boy. Quite simply, it was the best. We chose the Taster Menu and were rewarded by a succession of exquisitely-presented tiny courses, each with a different, complementary wine. For me, the fact that two twenty one year old young men adored it too, was great. Later, after a visit to the R.A. [a first for the boys I think] we were walking along Piccadilly when my grandson stopped, almost quivering with excitement before humbly approaching an undistinguished boy propping up a doorway. Apparently he was Jack Gleeson who plays King Joffrey in Game of Thrones and, to his credit, he was delightful with the boys’ adoration. I was bemused but glad that they were glad!! Much later I was shown a tiny clip of King Joffrey behaving really badly in character and his odd face looked just perfect for the part! I think that this brief encounter was probably the icing on the birthday cake for The Boy!!



 King Joffrey from Game of Thrones
insisting on a selfie with the boys.